I not a javascipt programer, but I do know a bit of asp and php so I can kinda get around working out what someone has done if its not too complicated.

I downloaded a countdown script from Dithered (http://www.dithered.com/javascript/countdown/index.html) the other day. Its an image based counter.

It works fine with IE5 mac, mozilla and safari.

My problem with the script is with IE6 win, what happens is that IE6 keeps downloading the images as the counter counts. This makes the counter clunky and slow. IE6 also never stops working because of it, the little windows icon that moves to indicate downloading is always moving. If you hit stop the numbers dissapear and then it all starts over.

Strange thing is that it works fine on my local server. It also works fine on the dithered demo (http://www.dithered.com/javascript/countdown/example.html).

I suspect the problem is something with the path in linking the images. Locally and on the demo relative paths were used. On my site I had to use absolute paths like so" /images/nameofimage.gif" instead of "images/nameofimage.gif" becuase the counter appears in my sidebar which appears on all my pages some of which are not in the root.

Could anybody please take a look at it, or give some advice?
If anyone knows of any good image based Dom based javascript countdown timers it would be much appritiated.

You can see the timer on my site (http://www.aquaba.co.za).

Thanks

josses

01-03-2004, 06:40 PM

what you probably want to do is take all of the images that you are going to be using for the counter and pre load them into your browser that way you will not get the loading lag. and because it is changing every second you might want to make sure that the images are very small because if you are using 10 highres images it will create the load lag as well

you don't have to put the complete virtual image file path in
eg:
preloadimages("1.gif","2.gif","3.gif")
you can put all your Number image names in here

Skyzyx

01-03-2004, 09:23 PM

If you want to do a fantastically easy job, you could utilize Pixy's (http://www.pixy.cz/blogg/clanky/cssnopreloadrollovers/) CSS Rollover method to change everything. Then you'd only have to wait for one image to load. Of course you'd have to rewrite the script from scratch, but... hey, a new project for me. Woo-hoo!

Gambithunt

01-03-2004, 10:59 PM

Thanks for the help guys, gonna give that second script a try and see if it works...

Gambithunt

01-03-2004, 11:02 PM

Found this preloader on the dithered site, I suppose I'll try this first because all the scripts there are supposed to be cross browser compatible.